The Bonneville Run is a road trip being undertaken by a group of Australians. We're travelling from Perth in Western Australia and putting together the ultimate road trip. The 2010 version of the trip stated and ended in San Jose, California and over 5000 miles of driving later, we'd visited Los Angeles, Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon and much more. The highlight of the journey is a visit to the Bonneville Salt Flats for the SCTA's Bonneville SpeedWeek 2010.

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Friday, August 13, 2010

Beatty to Vegas, via Scotty's Castle

On our first day in Nevada, we visited Scotty's Castle, in the Death Valley National Park. Scotty's Castle is actually the "Death Valley Ranch", and it wasn't actually Scotty's either. Scotty's Castle was built by a wealthy couple as their vacation home, and Scotty was a close friend who entertained the couple and their guests, while pretending to live there.

The Death Valley Ranch was an amazing building, with it's own hydro-electric power station and rather advanced cooling systems for the era in which it was built. Over the years many Californian celebrities came to stay at the Ranch when they visited Death Valley.

We had lunch at a little bar in Beatty known as the Sourdough Saloon. This Saloon's claim to fame lies in the car parts covering it's walls. Over the years, many automotive manufacturers have used Death Valley to test their cooling systems and many of those test teams have retired to the Sourdough Saloon for dinner and a drink or two at the end of a long day. They've also been known to donate signed car parts to the Saloon, to be hung on the walls.

By now it was about time we hit the road, as we had rooms booked at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, so we pointed the Cadillac in the general direction of Las Vegas and stood on the gas. A couple of hours later and we were pulling in to the parking at the Bellagio. I knew to expect Vegas to be big, but it still surprised me with just how big everything is. Our room was up on the 24th floor of the Bellagio, with a perfect view of the famous Fountain Show and also a great view of the strip.

About Me

In my daily life, I am a parts interpreter at a Holden dealer, but in my spare time, I'm a motorsport and event photographer who dabbles in a little landscape and nature work. A bit of a jack of all trades photographically, I guess.

Neither job pays particularly well, but the day job pays well enough and lets me walk away stress free at the end of the day so that I can concentrate on taking photos and not have to worry about what I need to do at work tomorrrow.

I have spent a bit of time travelling around Australia when I was younger, and am a big fan of taking road trips when I can. In 2009, I bought a car over eBay and had it delivered to my brothers place in San Jose, California. I made my first visit to the US in August of that year and spent a month around San Jose and San Francisco. I then left the car in the trusty hands of my brother and his wife, and promised to get it out of their yard as soon as I could organise shipping. As it turns out, that didn't happen for a while, as I ended up going back in August the following year for a 5000 mile road trip taking in the sights of California, Utah, Nevada and a little of Arizona.

As of July 2015, I've added a few more stamps to the passport, but not been back to the USA again. I am, however, planning on changing that in August 2016, with another road trip from California to the Bonneville salt and beyond.